The movies that are going to be written about in Brittany Murphy's obituaries are Just Married, 8 Mile, Clueless, and maybe Sin City. But the one most sadly relevant is a movie that few people saw, The Dead Girl. Each chapter of the movie shows how a different woman is affected by the discovery of a woman's body in a field, until the last chapter doubles back and shows us her haunting final days. Murphy invested the young woman with desperation, sadness, and doom, qualities that will only seem more intense now that she too has died young. It's not for everybody (Steve Dunn didn't seem to like it), but it was the best movie in 2007 that I saw, and it succeeded on the strength of its powerful acting. Murphy will be missed.


One Reply to Final Chapter

Jackie Mason | December 24, 2009
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Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Mile-High Hypocrisy

The homeowners' association in a Denver suburb is furious that one of its residents has dared to put up a Christmas wreath in the shape of the peace symbol. (link) Yeah. Keep reading till the end. Go »

When Anxieties Attack

It feels weird to write about a fairly minor health incident in my life after someone else on this site just went through a major crisis. But people have been asking since Kelly's cryptic Facebook comment on Tuesday morning and I guess I should explain. I had been working every night last week on a project for work and getting a couple of hours of sleep each night, which turned into an all-weekend thing, and the avalanche of tasks didn't stop when the site launched early Monday morning. Go »

Scott's Pet Peeve #2519

Why do some microwaves have a convenient quick-start option if you press 1 or 2 or 3, so that they instantly start cooking with 1:00 or 2:00 or 3:00 on the clock... but DON'T have this same functionality programmed into 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9, which do nothing when pressed alone? How does an engineer possess both the vision to provide the former and the lack of imagination that results in the latter? Go »

Thoughts from Barnes & Noble

- Aren't all of these books in the clearance aisles the same ones I saw while Christmas shopping? - Sarasota must be really obsessed with astrology, Barack Obama, pet psychology, and Eastern cooking. Or the whole country is. Go »

How to Get on My Bad Side

Sign me up for information about lap band surgery, using my work email address and work phone number. I've been getting calls from various hospitals since last week. At first I thought it was my friend and co-worker Aaron (not Shurtleff), since he has a mischievous sense of humor, but he denies it. Go »

Day 86

The diet continues, but I haven't lost as much as I would like by now. Four pant sizes is something to be proud of, but three of them were lost in January, so you can understand my frustration. I've wound up taking a fourth meal most days, bringing me to ~1200 calories, and so far I've had a lot of trouble going back down to three. Go »

Happy anniversary!

Funeratic began today in 1996.